Major public bulker owner Navios Maritime Holdings reported another year of deep losses for 2020 but said it was optimistic it would benefit from an ongoing market recovery.
At the same time, the New York-listed company said it was making moves to cope with $782m of debt coming due next year by selling vessels and arranging refinancing plans.
The Angeliki Frangou-led outfit reported on Wednesday a net loss of $94.4m for the fourth quarter, slightly narrowing its $111.2m deficit from the same period of 2019.
That result brought full-year 2020 losses to $193m, little changed from the $192m loss it reported in 2019.
Excluding non-cash accounting items, mainly a $88m impairment on some of its 45 bulkers, the company would have posted a narrower loss of $67.5m in 2020.
Poor bulker markets over much of last year depressed revenues.
At the same time, Navios Holding’s money-spinning subsidiary Navios South American Logistics also saw revenue drop. That came as some legacy time charters expired and a prolonged period of unusually warm weather and a drought in parts of South America lowered water levels, hampering navigation and shipping volumes.
Navios Holdings has said earlier this year it plans to list Navios South American Logistics, in which it owns a 64% stake, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Despite the results, Frangou stated that Navios Holdings the company is in a good place, in view of ongoing global economic recovery.
"Fiscal stimulus and other policy measures have propelled global economic recovery into 2021," she said.
"The IMF expects global GDP to grow by 6.0% in 2021, the highest GDP growth in the past 50 years. Mass inoculation programs are underway, facilitating a return to normalcy. Consequently, we are optimistic about demand for dry bulk vessels in 2021 and are positioned to capture market upside with 51.7% of our available days exposed to the spot market”.
Dealing with the debt
Navios Holdings, which has minority stakes in other US-listed Navios outfits and stopped distributing dividends in 2015, faces a major refinancing task next year.
The company's debt pile consists of 7.375% notes maturing in January and 11.25% notes falling due in August of that year.
Navios said on Wednesday it was “currently attempting to address these upcoming maturities and create additional liquidity to fund working capital requirements through the sale of assets and refinancing plans”.
However, the company added, that “there can be no assurance it will be successful in such attempts or that any such attempts will be consummated on terms satisfactory to us, or at all.”
The Greek company sold several older ships in 2020 as part of an ongoing fleet renewal in which incoming and outgoing ships were broadly matched.
In the first months of 2021, however, Navios Holdings was primarily busy offloading ships. The company confirmed the sale of one handysize, two panamaxes and one ultramax vessel for total proceeds of $56m.
The two panamaxes it sold went to affiliated parties, as TradeWinds reported.
